


I Don't Want Pity, Just a Safe Place to Hide

by SegaBarrett



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 14:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17143400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Freddie Trumper, Bangkok, and a change of heart.





	I Don't Want Pity, Just a Safe Place to Hide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Borusa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Borusa/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Chess.
> 
> A/N: Title is from "Mother Love" by another Freddie - i.e. Queen.

He had to admit he relished the look on Sergievsky’s face when the video had played, the video of his wife and their children in Russia, the perfect pantomime of whatever the Soviet version of a Norman Rockwell was.

The man had left it all behind for Florence and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair because Florence was Freddie’s, always had been Freddie’s. 

But try telling that to the perfectly poised Russian who never seemed to lose his temper or his cool, who always looked like all of his emotions had packed up and moved to a beach somewhere and left behind perfect concentration. 

Freddie paced. He was alone now – Walter had left the room after congratulating him on a successful interview. He was doing a good job at Global Television; that was what Walter always told him. He got to the heart of the story and he wasn’t afraid of ruffling a few feathers.

That was how Walter said it, at least – “rufflin’”, actually, with a down-homey type of tone as if he had to crank his American meter up to eleven. Freddie wondered if Walter was even truly an American or if he just played one on TV. 

For a few seconds, the bliss of winning had encompassed him, the way that it used to. It hadn’t been strategy this time but a short jab, a boxing match.

And then simple emptiness, from his toes up into his forehead, a shiver.

He’d seen Florence again, standing beside him. He didn’t know how he had pictured her exactly but not like this. She was smiling when he talked to her, when the Russian talked to her, but she looked distracted.

Not much fun being with a married man, Freddie thought to himself, too many in the bed and the little one said “Roll over.”

She was probably wondering when his wife, or memories of her, would show up to ruin it all. It served her right, anyhow. Why go after someone who already had somebody and leave him all alone? 

He only needed himself, though. He would keep telling himself that. He had to keep doing what Walter said, because Walter knew how to make him a lot of money. Money, in turn, could buy him anything he wanted – money could buy him enough stuff to make him never worry about what Florence was up to, ever again.

And yet something didn’t feel quite right. The way Walter had smiled when he had thanked him for the interview. What was he getting out of all of this, anyway?

***

Freddie was back at my hotel room in Bangkok. It felt empty; it was the cavity in a mouth after a tooth had been extracted, and his tongue would keep playing over it to remind myself of what he had lost.

Florence had always been darting in and out, with schedules and requests that Freddie never felt like fulfilling. She had been annoying, perfectly annoying. She had been the chiming of a cuckoo clock.

Now, Freddie was left to figure out his own schedule, to decide what to wear, how to act, and where to be, with some prodding from Walter over the phone in the most impersonal of demands.

Was there any way that he could ever get her back? If so, he had ruined it by humiliating the Russian on international TV. She probably wouldn’t be too happy about it.

But why was she running after a man with a wife, in the first place? She was too old to play a mistress and deserved better, anyway.

Florence probably deserved better than Freddie, too, but that was something Freddie had always known. 

Maybe he could find her and talk to her, warn her about the growing sense of unease that Walter was planning something truly horrible to do with the Russian.

He needed to find her and needed to swallow his pride. He should have never trusted Walter. 

***

Considering that there was one hotel in town that had vacancies in the wake of the international chess championship coming to Bangkok, it wasn’t all that surprising when Freddie discovered that Florence and Anatoly’s room was merely two floors above his very own. 

He moved forward to rap on the door and felt, before he could connect, a tapping on his own shoulder.

He whirled around – God, he hated to be touched, only Florence was allowed, who the hell was tapping him? – to see Walter standing there, looking smug and wagging a finger.

“Before you go in and do that, Mr. Trumper… I have some information that I think may be of us to you.”

“It isn’t,” he turned back, “And don’t touch me.”

“You’re under my employ, Mr. Trumper. I’m paying for you to be there.”

“Doesn’t mean you get to touch me… Walter.”

Freddie narrowed his eyes on him, willing Walter to feel every inch of his desire to kill him. 

“Ms. Vassy’s father is alive,” Walter said a beat later, and when Freddie turned back and stared in shock, he chuckled. “I thought you might want to know about that. You want to win back the little lady, don’t you?”

“You’re lying,” Freddie replied. “It’s what you do.”

“Maybe. But you won’t know for sure unless you do what I tell you to. Do you want to be the one who lost Florence the chance to be reunited?”

Freddie pursed his lips. If he brought Florence’s father back, she couldn’t refuse to talk to him then. Then, she would want to be back with him and she would leave Anatoly behind. No, that was stupid. There had been too much between him and Florence. But maybe… maybe this was the right thing to do, to show her he had changed a little at least. She had always told him that he needed to be more mature, to put others first.

But Walter was a liar. He lied as he breathed. 

He’d never know if Florence didn’t help, though.

If the man was alive…

Florence hadn’t told him how much finding her father meant to her, but she didn’t need to – he had heard her crying in the middle of the night when she thought he wasn’t awake. 

“Tell me more, Walter.”

***

He went to Anatoly first, to try to convince him to throw the match. He felt slimy, like he was a snake on legs walking around and slithering up heels. This wasn’t him. 

Freddie was a man who said things straight out; he didn’t sneak around in corners making shady deals.

But now he did.

“We can work something out, can’t we?” Freddie asked, up on his toes. Florence wouldn’t talk to him; he knew she wouldn’t listen to him. But maybe if Anatoly threw the match, then she wouldn’t be intrigued by him anymore. 

“There’s no deal,” Anatoly snarled, and shut the door in his face.

“Freddie? What are you doing here?” 

He heard Florence’s voice behind him and couldn’t believe his luck.

“Florence! Listen… You have to listen to me. I was wrong… I was so stupid. We were such a good team together… You could walk away from it all. Just me.” He felt like he had fallen underwater and was pedaling to try to get back to the surface. He needed Florence, needed her, wasn’t the same without her. The game wasn’t the same without being able to see her out of the corner of his eye, smiling at him when he was doing well and shaking her head at him when he had stepped out of line.

And the other things. The moments when he had wanted to fall apart and she had known exactly the words to say, the places to touch on him that made everything feel safe again. Was that what love was?

“Florence… I love you.” The words were out of his mouth before he could reign them in, and maybe he didn’t want to. Maybe that was what she needed to hear, the magic words…

But instead, she stared at him and shook her head, said a few words in disgust and walked away, arm in arm with Anatoly.

But it was an awkward walk, an unsteady gait.

There were cracks in the road. Cracks in them.

It didn’t bring Freddie any joy, the way he thought it would have. 

***

Freddie watched the first six games from his hotel room. He wanted to smash something as he watch each game end in a draw. What could the Russian be thinking? Was he losing on purpose – was he considering tossing the game?

It was disgusting, now that he was watching it unfold. To lose when you could win – to throw it all away. 

That was what he had done, hadn’t he? He had marched off in a huff when Florence had quit, and he’d resigned that very day.

He’d let his emotions get the better of him. He couldn’t let that happen again. It wasn’t a true chess game if the best man, truly the best man, didn’t win.

He knew what he had to do.

***

Freddie’s hands were shaking. He wished he had something to do with them – if he could only grab a hold of the pieces already, that would give them a place to be. The place where they belonged.

Instead, they flopped into the pockets of his jeans, into the seams of the leather jacket he had picked up on his way to Bangkok. (Might as well look like the obnoxious American they all think I am anyway, he remembered thinking bitterly.)

He had dropped the note under Anatoly’s door and skittered away; he remembered hearing that kids liked to play “Ding, Dong, Ditch”, ringing doorbells and running away, giggling and hollering and thinking it was hilarious.

He couldn’t remember ever being a kid like that, playing pranks, sneaking under bridges, playing doctor, building forts. There had never been anything but him and the pieces and the board.

Maybe he wouldn’t come, and then it wouldn’t be Freddie’s problem anymore. He’d report on the game and then go back home. He would lay on the futon and turn off all the lights, and he could sit in darkness for a few days before he felt up to taking out the chess board and arranging all the pieces, and playing a game against himself.

Maybe he always was, anyway.

“It’s you.”

He was jerked out of his thoughts by Anatoly’s voice, accusatory and scolding and oh-so-Russian. He was very ungrateful, Freddie considered, considering that he was about to make him a world champion all over again. Some people just didn’t want help.

Regardless, Freddie explained what he had noticed, the cracks in Viigand’s defense that Anatoly could exploit.  
Anatoly looked him over, suspicion obvious on his features.

“Why are you telling me this?” he inquired,

“Because I love chess,” Freddie replied, and he didn’t have to think about that one. The game had been the only thing that ever truly made sense to him; it had rules, rules that could be obeyed or broken depending on what was best for him.

And now the rules were telling him to stand behind Anatoly. 

Because he loved chess. That was all, wasn’t it?

He pressed a notepad into Anatoly’s hand.

“Good luck.”

***

Florence was standing forlornly in front of the airport security line, head hunched over. She looked broken.

Freddie walked gingerly, with careful moves, not wishing to upset the balance. Maybe the best thing for her right now was to be alone; maybe the best thing was to be as far away from Freddie Trumper as possible.

“Hey, Florence,” he called, before he could help himself.

She turned and looked up at him, rubbing at her eyes.

“Come to gloat?” she asked. He shook his head.

“Do you… want to go back home?”

“Where’s home?” Florence asked.

He shrugged.

“I don’t know. If you still want to look for your father… we can do that? Or we could go back to New York? I just… want to go anywhere with you. I promise I’ll try not to be too much of a bother…” He paused. “Well, I’ll try at least. Just… I don’t want to be apart anymore, Florence. I’m better with you.”

“I don’t think that’s true, Freddie.”

Freddie looked up at her, letting his eyes go wide and a little pleading.

“But we have to get ready.”

She gave an exasperated sigh. 

“Ready for what, Freddie?”

He ventured a smile.

“…For your chess career, of course. You’re going to be a true champion.”


End file.
